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Nirvana, a front page and lots of laughter

The Dalai Lama’s thoughts on world problems move naturally into the spiritual realm as he selects a design for the Sunday Star.

Meet the new and esteemed guest editor of the Toronto Star: The Dalai Lama.His Holiness agreed to help make the decisions that determine what appears in the Sunday Star for
October 24, 2010. Watch how he put his compassion...into the paper. Video by Randy Risling.

By Sandro ContentaStaff Reporter

Sun., Oct. 24, 2010

It isn’t every day that, when deciding the Toronto Star’s front page, discussions about the Buddhist concept of Nirvana break out.

But with the 14th Dalai Lama sitting in as guest editor, nothing seemed more natural.

“There are two kinds of Nirvana,” the Dalai Lama said, flanked on one side by the Star’s publisher, John Cruickshank, and on the other by its editor-in-chief, Michael Cooke.

“One Nirvana (is) for humanity. Another Nirvana is for the individual. My Nirvana is (the) whole world becoming more peaceful, more compassionate, with less problems — that’s world Nirvana.”

The Dalai Lama’s global perspective is reflected in this special edition of the Sunday Star, focusing on the more than 43 million forcibly displaced people in the world.

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“Myself, I am one of them,” he said, referring to his escape from Chinese-controlled Tibet in 1959.

Star editors joined the Dalai Lama in his personal meeting room at the Tibetan Canadian Cultural Centre in Etobicoke. He sat in front of a statute of a Buddhist deity and carefully examined seven possible front pages for the Star, designed by Toronto Buddhists with the help of Star staff.

“You can be sure that I will choose the best one,” the Dalai Lama joked.

The first design had him puzzled: “Very strange,” he said, looking at a front page that showed the right side of his face as a young man in 1956 and the left side as he is today.

“In Tibetan opera there is a character called the lady with a double face,” he said, suddenly roaring with laughter.

A cover design with the headline “Seeking nirvana,” elicited his perspective on global peace. Another — the composite sketch of a face representing different displaced peoples — caught his eye.

“It immediately captures the face of suffering,” said Tibet’s spiritual leader and head of its government in exile.

But the one he choose was simply headlined, “43 million displaced people in the world.” It was designed by Toronto-born Heather Moore, a designer and painter who lives in Burlington, with input from the Star’s Sharis Shahmiryan.

“It’s very striking. There is a sense of precision,” he said, referring to the number of people displaced within their own countries or forced to cross borders as refugees.

The international community doesn’t spend enough effort dealing with the causes of displacement, he added.

“It’s dealing with the cause that is lagging,” he said. “Many African states . . . the real cause is their own leaders’ negligence. They show more concern about their own individual power and spend more money for weapons and not really pay attention to agriculture and education.”

The Dalai Lama then read closely, with the help of a translator, an editorial on displaced people written by Cruickshank. He gave it his approval and agreed to add his byline to the piece.

Cruickshank said the Dalai Lama’s international vision fits naturally in the pages of the Toronto Star.

“His focus on dispossessed people in exile is exactly the kind of concern we feel through the Atkinson principles,” he said, referring to the paper’s guiding principles, set out decades ago by the Star’s first publisher, Joseph E. Atkinson. “It exemplifies the same kind of thinking.”

“What we aspire to as an institution is to represent and engage our audiences in the way the Dalai Lama engages the whole world,” he added. “So for us, it was an opportunity to be with one of the real great sages of the ages and to bring his message to the paper. We think it’s a huge honour to us, but we also think it’s a huge service to our readers.”

At the end of the 40-minute meeting, Cooke lightheartedly asked the Dalai Lama about an issue that has disrupted the Nirvana of many Torontonians for decades — the Maple Leaf’s inability to win another Stanley Cup.

“Your holiness, on a more trivial matter, we have a sports team in Toronto — the Maple Leafs — that cannot win,” Cooke said. “What are the attributes of a winning team?”

“I really don’t know,” the Dalai Lama replied. “When it comes to sports, my experience is very little. On top of that, I have not much interest. In Dharamsala (India) they invited me to a cricket tournament. I went there, and I didn’t know who was losing or winning.”

Then he laughed his contagious laugh.

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